Vietnam vet's U-non-FO story

[Maury Markowitz]

Just came across this:


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/aliens/comments/1dn745z/a_story_from_vietnam/


Great story! I see a number of things wrong here:

1) if this is, as suggested, a crash site, what happened to all the other trees? They are tightly packed everywhere, and then this managed to fall in a location with only two?

2) More of the photo is foggy, especially the upper section. Even the trees around the object are fogged. Yet the object seems very clear indeed. To me this yells "montage". It looks like a photo of a small construction site or LV that someone plopped an object on top of.

But now I need someone a lot more familiar with classic film photography to chime in here.

The story relates that this was taken with a Nikon F, and it's in the 60s, so the 105 mm lens they refer to could only be the f2.5 Nikkor-P. But this is a lens for portrait photography, not for long shots. ~5 m seems to be its sweet spot.

The story clearly relates that they had to stay high and away from the object or the Huey would have problems. Yet this image does not look high or far. It also shows no depth-of-field issues, everything is relatively focussed, yet it's being shot from a helicopter so they would have to have a really fast shutter speed to eliminate any signs of motion, which would thus require a big aperture setting and that would give lots of depth-of-field?

I just don't know enough about film : is this photo something that could be made from a distant helicopter using a portrait lens?

The story

 

[NoParty]

He had me at "solid state motor oil" ! (If that makes any kinda sense).

The problems are waaaaay too numerous to mention. A couple of favs?
The photo is unnecessarily cropped. For what, style points?
There were lots of other images, that were flawed, but could bolster
the claim that something happened here...but, uh, let's not post them.

 

[deirdre]

He had me at "solid state motor oil" ! (If that makes any kinda sense).

it's a good reminder though, im overdue for an oil change.

To me this yells "montage".

i dont know if you would pick such a flimsy "ship" if you were making a montage. the whole sunlit side popped out (or rather in). Looks like part of a roof to me.

 

[JMartJr]

The photo is unnecessarily cropped. For what, style points?

Some (most, that I've massed with, but I've only messed with a few) AI image generators create perfectly square images as the default, Minor cropping could hide that.

 

[Scaramanga]

Just came across this:


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/aliens/comments/1dn745z/a_story_from_vietnam/


Great story! I see a number of things wrong here:

1) if this is, as suggested, a crash site, what happened to all the other trees? They are tightly packed everywhere, and then this managed to fall in a location with only two?

2) More of the photo is foggy, especially the upper section. Even the trees around the object are fogged. Yet the object seems very clear indeed. To me this yells "montage". It looks like a photo of a small construction site or LV that someone plopped an object on top of.

But now I need someone a lot more familiar with classic film photography to chime in here.

The story relates that this was taken with a Nikon F, and it's in the 60s, so the 105 mm lens they refer to could only be the f2.5 Nikkor-P. But this is a lens for portrait photography, not for long shots. ~5 m seems to be its sweet spot.

The story clearly relates that they had to stay high and away from the object or the Huey would have problems. Yet this image does not look high or far. It also shows no depth-of-field issues, everything is relatively focussed, yet it's being shot from a helicopter so they would have to have a really fast shutter speed to eliminate any signs of motion, which would thus require a big aperture setting and that would give lots of depth-of-field?

I just don't know enough about film : is this photo something that could be made from a distant helicopter using a portrait lens?

The story View attachment 77082

The UFO is identical to something that shows up in the Smallville TV series....in fact even the surrounding foliage looks similar.

https://smallville.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Spaceships

 

[deirdre]

identical

similar, not identical.

 

[Calter]

Maybe it's just me, but the story does not read like what a veteran in his mid-late 70s would write on an IPad his first time using reddit the day he was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

 

[Ann K]

Maybe it's just me, but the story does not read like what a veteran in his mid-late 70s would write on an IPad his first time using reddit the day he was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

It's just you. The ability to type, the ability to write complex prose, and the ability to tell stories are not limited to youngsters. Nevertheless, I think it's a faked photo with a faked backstory.

 

[John J.]

The very roughly circular "cleared" area around the shiny object reminded me of photos I've seen of blast zones made by
BLU-82 "Daisy Cutter" bombs in Vietnam.

The BLU-83 was used to flatten areas of jungle to allow helicopter landings, so despite its 15,000 lbs (approx. 6800 kg) weight it was designed not to significantly crater the land beneath it:

Judging by the trees in the "mystery" photo, if anything the open area looks too small to be from a GBU-82 blast, but US forces used vast numbers of explosive devices of smaller size in Vietnam.
Wouldn't be surprised if sappers/ combat engineers sometimes blasted clearings in planned operations where circumstances allowed.
Of course, there are many other causes of clearings in forests, but crashed UFOs might not be the most common.

A photo of one of these blasted areas of Vietnamese forest might be a good starting point for a fake resembling the mystery picture
(I don't know it's a hoax, but strongly suspect it is); and would have the advantage of having "correct" vegetation.

It's hard to judge scale, and knowing the type of trees might help.
-Anyone here a tree-spotter? IIRC @Skalman knows a lot about the natural world.

It crossed my mind that perhaps the trees are much smaller than I intuitively feel they are, and that the triangle might be some sort of bivouac using a shiny material (not very tactical, so not Vietnam War era), with the "lifted" corner tied to a tree at left (out of picture) and the two other visible corners pinned to the ground (yellow arrows, below); the black stripe across the bright triangular area might be a reflection of a leaning, denuded tree trunk presumably off-picture to the right and on higher ground).

I think my bivouac theory is unlikely, though!

 

[deirdre]

The ability to type,

do ipads have keyboards? i'm having flashbacks (no pun intended) to that poor kid using the FC stencil going letter by letter. we know this guy has a computer as he scanned the photo into it. why not just use the computer

 

[Ann K]

I think my bivouac theory is unlikely, though!

I don't think a flexible shell could be stretched tight enough to give a sharp, wrinkle-free structure.

 

[John J.]

In the Reddit account linked to in the OP,

...we got some radio chatter about a recon detachment that failed to respond after reporting a strange structure in the jungle. ...my commanding officer, some ring knocker fresh outta school, didn't have an issue sending a couple of us up in a Huey to get eyes on whatever "structure" they could have been talking about.

Maybe looking for the recon detachment should have been the priority?

 

[Duke]

In the Reddit account linked to in the OP,

...we got some radio chatter about a recon detachment that failed to respond after reporting a strange structure in the jungle. ...my commanding officer, some ring knocker fresh outta school, didn't have an issue sending a couple of us up in a Huey to get eyes on whatever "structure" they could have been talking about.

Maybe looking for the recon detachment should have been the priority?

Was doing that when you posted.

https://www.asalives.org/ASAONLINE/asa02.htm

The 509th Radio Research Group did exist, this site popped up immediately. Included are a couple "order of battle" breakdowns. I looked over the site, didn't find anything that jumped off the screen as useful in further researching the claim.

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

i dont know if you would pick such a flimsy "ship" if you were making a montage. the whole sunlit side popped out (or rather in). Looks like part of a roof to me.

Yeah to me this immediately looked like part of a metal roof, tilted on its side. And the near side looks concave and in shadow like it was the underside of the roof.

It looks like a painting/drawing though, not a photograph. Especially the trees in the background.

I'm no expert in AI prompt engineering much less image-prompt engineering, but getting to this took just a few minutes in midjourney:

Someone with better ability to describe visuals in a way the AI understands and doesn't get confused by may be able to get closer.

 

[Ann K]

do ipads have keyboards?

Duh. An iPad is a computer, and has a keyboard which appears on the screen whenever you need it to post text. I'm using one right now. It also takes and saves photos, and you can edit them as well.

 

[MonkeeSage]

The image kind of reminds me of the ones from the "Jonathan Reed" hoax in the 90's.

The fantastic claims of one Dr. Jonathan Reed seem to have come under heavy fire as of late.

Reed, as many of you may know, claimed to be a Seattle psychologist, who, in October 1996 took his golden retriever Suzy with him on a hike to one of the Cascade Mountains and found a strange alien creature and a hovering, black obelisk.

Reed claims to have killed the alien, brought it back to his house and photographed it, only to eventually have it stolen.

On the day in question, Reed's dog was sniffing around in the brush until something caught her attention. Suzy bolted ahead of Reed who soon heard her barking. In a moment or two, the barking turned even more ominous sounding.

Reed was sure that Suzy was in a fight with a wild animal, maybe a bear. They had spotted one earlier in the day.

Grabbing a large tree branch to ward off some fierce competitor, he finally came close enough to see the cause of the struggle. To his utter shock, he was staring at a being beyond his wildest imagination.

The beast was moving at lighting speed, and vibrating simultaneously. The beast grabbed Suzy and began to tear her to shreds.

Reed yelled, and caught the attention of the beast, who stared at him in a fierce, menacing fashion.

Somehow, Reed managed to crack the beast on the head, supposedly killing it. The creature was about 4-5 feet tall, but had more mature features than its childlike size would indicate.

The creature was wearing a one piece, seamless, black garment, which rejuvenated itself when cut or torn.

Reed, exhausted from the emotional, adrenaline flowing ordeal, rested for a time, contemplating what to do.

After a period of two hours, Reed heard a humming sound in the forest, and followed it until he saw a black obelisk hovering above the ground.

Fighting off heavy, electrostatic laden air, Reed managed to touch the obelisk. Eventually, the humming stopped. He neither saw nor heard anyone… or anything else in the vicinity of the black obelisk.

[...]

There were more allegations against Jonathan Reed that occurred on the Jeff Rense radio program on May 2nd, 2002, in which Royce Myers, Kathleen Anderson, Bill Werner and Denise Charvet appear.

Bill Werner and Denise Charvet knew Jonathan Reed very well before October 1996, Both stated that his real name is Jonathan Bradley Rutter and told about information about his personal history that is contrary to what Jonathan has been stated on radio shows, in public lectures, Websites, etc,

[...]

Recent allegations have come to light that Jonathan created a false identity. I have received communications this week from Jonathan admitting that he, indeed, created a false identity – Dr. Jonathan Reed. He asserts that he did so in an effort to protect family and friends from the ridicule and harassment associated with cases of this nature. He further asserts that, despite claims to the contrary, the encounter did, in fact, happen.

Source: https://www.tall-white-aliens.com/dr-reed-and-the-screaming-alien-hoax/

 

[deirdre]

Duh. An iPad is a computer, and has a keyboard which appears on the screen

duh. i meant a proper keyboard which is why i mentioned the fc stencil board.

 

[deirdre]

The image kind of reminds me of the ones from the "Jonathan Reed" hoax in the 90's.

see, that is proper black.

 

[John J.]

Maybe looking for the recon detachment should have been the priority?

Was doing that when you posted.

Er, sorry for any confusion- I meant maybe the helicopter in 1968 should have looked for the lost recon chaps before looking for an uncharted building.

 

[jdog]

Posted anonymously to a subreddit known for larping, with zero confirmable details about the incident... hmm.

I also looked over the specified region in Google Maps; it's currently all very lush forest on rolling hills, not a palm tree to be seen.

The object is also very lacking in detail, very glossy; it would be easy to model in 3D and add environmental reflections. Apparently has a roll of negatives showing the blur effect on the clearing, but makes no mention of why none of them are offered. A shooter developing a roll of film at the time might also be more likely to talk about their negatives coming out blurry, if he developed them himself.

 

[Mendel]

it feels to me the color of the sky as reflected by the UFO does not match the color of light that the scene is lit with (e.g. the color of the fog).
But I haven't looked at the data.

 

[Eburacum]

I'm leaning toward 'AI generated image'. The trees in the background look messy, like an AI hallucination.

 

[Skalman]

Yeah, I think it is AI-generated. The palms do not look real at all (especially those further away) and in that region I would expect to see a lot more "real" trees (that is, woody eudicots capable of secondary growth from the vascular cambium) than palms but in the picture there seems to be more or less only palm trees.

 

[Eburacum]

And the spaceship looks identical to the Smallville 'Black Ship' (as used by Brainiac, if I am not mistaken).

Perhaps this image was generated using the Black Ship as a reference.

 

[Ann K]

@Skalman
I really want to work "woody eudicots" into my conversation, but alas, I fear I would only get blank stares in response. Thanks for your expertise!